Monday, August 6, 2012

Monitoring and Detection Methods of Water Pollution.

Water
pollution is the contamination of water. It occurs when pollutants are
discharged directly or indirectly into water bodies without enough treatment to
remove harmful materials/compounds from it.

Water
pollution will affect plants and organisms living in these water bodies. It can
also contaminate drinking water and cause spreading of diseases.Water pollution has taken place in many
parts of the world, it is inevitable yet we are able to help reduce the amount
of pollution in these waters. These waters may have to be our future drinking
supply. If we do not do anything about this water, we may run out of water
faster than oil. Therefore, in order to ensure this water will be safe, we have
to do monitoring of these water bodies.

Monitoring water pollution

Monitoring water pollution involve
sampling the chemical condition of water, sediments, and fish tissue to
determine dissolved oxygen and other parameters of water pollution. Monitoring
of physical conditions such as temperature is also needed.

Monitoring is usually conducted at a
fixed station on continuous basis. Other times where monitoring is needed is
during emergency situation (such as after an oil spill).Main focus for a monitoring program is to collect enough
data by sampling and analysing, studying and evaluating of the results to give an
evaluation of the water quality. The result is only available to that one place
of sampling and the time of which the sample is being taken.

Determine whether compliance with pollution
regulations or implementation of effective pollution control actions are
being met

Respond to emergencies, such as spills and
floods.

Monitoring methods

»Software system
Commercial software such as the Environmental monitoring data management
systems are becoming more commonly used as a method to monitor water quality
for water pollution. They can monitor progress, allow managing of all
monitoring data in a single central place and flag up inconsistencies or omissions
[automated to send alerts].The software can also generate regulatory and other
reports that is useful and make it easier for monitoring.

»EcoMapper

Without having to go underwater, collecting of good quality data would be easy.
The EcoMapper is a Autonomous underwater vehicle. It helps to map out water
quality, the currents of the water and bathymetry. It gives many flexible
options in water quality, mapping out the bottoms of the seas and even profiles
the current of the water. There is side scan sonar that can be added on.
However only one person can deploy the EcoMapper, it has a 8-14hour life span
at the speed of 2-4knots. EcoMapper constantly gives data as it moves through
the water.

»Robotic Fish
A robotic, powered by a battery, fish is made, this mechanical fish is designed
and tested. The cost is $3.6million. With the help of this fish, oxygen levels
of the water can be measured. Oil slicks and other contaminant that is present
in the water will be detected more easily. It is the first of its kind and data
that is being retrieved is of utmost important because it implicates with
global warming and the state of water resources. With the fish about 5 feet
long is can withstand pressures and currents. As it collects the data, it will
move at a speed of 1m/s, with an on-board guidance system will prevent them from
bumping into rocks, other fishes and even ships. They have a form of sonar
attach to them, allowing them to communicate in the water. With enough data
collected, it will come to the surface and transmit to the control center,
wireless. This will aid in creating a 3 dimensional map of the pollution in the
water body. If the battery is depleting, it will go back to the power hub on
its own for recharging. You can see how the fish moves in this link.

Detection methods of
water pollution

Waterborne disease outbreaks are rising due to the tremendous amount of
bacteria infiltrating the water bodies around the world. Microbial pathogens
continue to contaminate the drinking water supplies despite the measures taken
to prevent and control the spread of microbial pathogens in public and
individual water systems. Detecting early stages of water pollution is a vital
stage to improve water effluent quality and also ensures safer drinking water
for the general public for consumption. With the advance technology of
development of detection methods for water pollution, we are going to look at
some of the methods that is best used for treating water pollution.

» Usingtadpoleto detect water pollution is an
innovative method that is brought up. African clawed frog tadpoles, in response
to a pollutant can light up and will indicate the presence of several chemical
species at the same time. This method is easy to use, less time consuming and
less labour intensive than traditional detection methods for heavy metal detection
in water.

"In this work we combined genetically modified tadpoles with a detection
system developed at UW to detect the presence of heavy metal pollution in river
water in real time.” -- http://phys.org/news179084594.html#jCp

»Microbial Source Tracking: Methods

Microbial source tracking (MST) is a method used to determine the various host
that contributes to faecal pollution in water bodies. The concept that the
origin of faecal pollution can be traced using microbiological, genotypic,
phenotypic, and chemical methods has been termed microbial source tracking. The
application of MST is to provide a tool for identifying the source of pollution
and allowing proper remediation and preventive measures. Water contaminated with human faeces are
generally regarded as more hazardous to human health. For MST to be done,
indicator microorganisms are introduced to predict and detect the presence of
pathogenic microbes. Indicator organisms are very useful in as they function
the need to assay for every pathogen that may be present and detected in water.
Many advantages of using this method is that indicators are non-pathogenic,
rapidly detected, easily enumerated, have survival characteristics that are
similar to those of the pathogens of concern, and can be strongly associated
with the presence of pathogenic microorganisms. Some examples of indicators
microbes are E.coli, Enterococcus spp, C. perfringens.

Total and faecal coliforms have been used extensively as indicators for many
years to determine sanitary quality of surface waters. However, because of the
great diversity of microbial pathogens, current indicators of water quality may
not detect all types of microbial contamination. Some pathogens do not
co-occur with faecal pollution and bacterial indicators have greater sensitivity
to disinfection. Due to this sensitivity, there would be a lack in results of
consistent correlations between indicator absence and absence of pathogens.
Therefore, quantitative methods that can detect a variety of arrays of
microorganisms are needed.

»Swimming Behavioural Spectrophotometer (SBS) method

It is the method of detecting pollution through the behaviour of a protozoa in
water called genus Tetrahymena. This method was awarded as 2010 “Better World”
technology by the Association of University technology Mangers. By comparing
the movement of the protozoa which is placed in a control and the movement of
the protozoa which is placed in the sampling water allow the digital camera along
with specialized software which stored over 50 behaviour of protozoan in 3D
motion to identify the pollutants. Any other movements which are not programmed
indicate a problem in the water which requires further testing. This method can
detect both chemical and biological pollution such as heavy metal, pesticides
and industrial chemical. The advantage of this method is that it can identify
the water pollutants immediately however, the disadvantage is that you are
unable to identify the exact pollutant until further analyses.

»Algae detection method

A new and faster method was developed in Israel by Dr. Yulia Pinchasov.
Traditional method is a time consuming and costly method. However, this method
is faster, more cost efficient and accurate. By Shining laser beam onto the
algae allows researcher to determine the amount of contamination from the sound
waves emitted under the water. As the laser beam encourages photosynthesizing
of algae, the rate at which it photosynthesize and the condition of the algae
determines the amount of heat shot back into the water which creates the sound
waves. Underwater microphones are used to capture the sound waves which are
analyzed to determine the health of the algae as well as status of the water.
Different kinds of pollution affecting the algae will emit different sound.

3 comments:

water pollution is one kind of disaster, because of this many sea animals were going to die as well as many humans gets infected due to various chemicals in it.so government has to take the proper steps to avoid the water pollution.

With the help of good data monitoring tools you can monitor and take decisions after analysing the data. Water pollution can cause a number of diseases. If monitored and treated well, polluted water can be used in processes.